


Duty of Care

by CaptainR0cket



Series: Loki’s Monstrous Children [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Thor: The Dark World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24616828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainR0cket/pseuds/CaptainR0cket
Summary: Eir is called upon to assist a wounded Loki.  Taking place after the battle on Svartalfheim during Thor: The Dark World.
Relationships: Angrboða | Angerboda/Loki (Norse Religion & Lore)
Series: Loki’s Monstrous Children [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781284
Kudos: 16





	1. Do No Harm

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another attempt to reconcile Loki's monstrous children with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The medical wing settled into the routine of night, and Eir, the healer, made some final notes in the infirmary’s log. The attack on the Citadel had been disastrous. Asgard’s people had suffered greatly at the hands of the Dark Elves and would continue to do so, if the rumors that filtered through the wing on the tongues of tradesmen and soldiers alike were to be believed. War was coming.

Eir was old, older than most, and had spent many centuries tending to the populace. Wars had been plentiful, once upon a time, and skirmishes and battles, training accidents, and a multitude of minor injuries had filled the years prior to the invasion. She would have her house in order, regardless, and be ready when needed.

The lighting dimmed; the glow of the torchlight cast soft shadows along the exterior of the room in which she worked. The great windows that overlooked the city were framed by a series of balconies, where the junior healers and novices would, in fine weather, wheel their patients out to take the fresh air. They stood empty in the evening, silent witness to the damage caused by the invaders.

A noise, a little scuffle, came from the balcony. It came again, louder, and Eir called out. “Who’s out there, then?” She pushed to her feet and walked around her desk, readying herself to reprimand a wandering novice. Though old, her back was unbent and her step light. 

A shadow passed into the light. It was a boy, a youth really, dark-haired and pale and deeply familiar. Eir rubbed her tired eyes, and looked again.

Her eyes had deceived her, for the king’s unrepentant son had not been a child for many, many years, and languished in a cell deep in Asgard’s prison.

“What are you doing here, child?” Eir asked, not unkindly, mind full of the past and of a child not unlike the one before her. “It’s late, past curfew.”

The boy’s eyes glowed in the torchlight. Not a palace child. Eir knew all the palace children. “Are you the healer Eir?”

“I am. What business do you have here?”

“My father is injured,” the boy replied, and his hands folded and unfolded in front of him. 

“I’ll notify a healer, and they will attend him if he cannot be brought here. Where is your father?”

“It cannot be any healer. It must be you,” the boy said. He was tall for so young a lad, taller than Eir, and she scowled up at him.

“I will vouch for any of my healers,” she replied staunchly, gentle in spite of her sour expression. “I will call for someone.”

The boy’s hand on her wrist arrested her movement. She turned to face him, affronted, and could see at once that he was younger than she had at first suspected. His expression was guileless, but his eyes were strange, as if he were looking from a long distance, and dispassionately considering what he saw. Her heart pounded in alarm, and the lad turned his far-seeing eyes to hers.

Eir drew a breath and released it, ordering calm. “I will come with you,” she said quietly, despite the adrenaline galvanizing her system. She nodded her head. “Give me leave to get my tools.”

The boy moved with her toward the desk. She collected her bag, and smiled forcefully up at him. “I’ll call for an orderly to assist me, and we will go.”

“You’re lying,” the boy said, and the whole of his body seemed to lengthen and shift. A portal, a tear in the evening sky, opened behind the balcony, and he slid through, pulling Eir with him.

A moment of blinding panic and disorientation, and Eir came to her senses, on her knees in the dirt. The wind howled about them, casting a fine grit over everything. The landscape was desolate, unremarkable except for the outcropping of rock near them and the pall of gloom that hung over the land. Eir shielded her eyes. The boy looked down at her, and then turned to address someone. “She lies,” he said.

A voice came, like stones grinding against one another. “She stinks of fear. You frightened her.”

Eir pushed herself to her feet, clutching her bag. “I’ll thank you not to discuss me as if I’m not here,” she said sharply. A great wolf’s head, larger than a cart, lifted from the ground and fixed her with a bright eye. “Oh,” she said, softly, for what she’d considered at first glance to be a small hill was the enormous, dark body of a monstrous wolf, laying on its side. “Oh.”

“Father is this way,” the boy said, and turned on his heel. “We found him, nearly dead, and Mother needs your help to heal him.”

Eir tore her eyes from the calm face of the wolf. It lowered its head, and closed its eyes against the wind. The boy led her into the shelter afforded by the wolf’s body. “What is this place?”

“The Dark Elves’ realm.”

“You are no elf.”

“No,” the boy said. “They are all gone.” He turned and looked at her. “There were some left to die on the field. My brother ate them.” It was said quietly, with no real malice, but Eir shivered at the curious look the lad gave her, as if he were waiting to see what she would say.

“That’s a shame. I might have been able to save them, too,” she said quietly. 

The boy blinked, and slowed his pace to match hers. “Why? The Dark Elves laid waste to Asgard. Why would you help them?”

“Life is precious,” Eir said. “I made a promise, a very long time ago, to do no harm. I have worked hard to keep that promise.”

“But you lied. You were not going to come with me.”

“No,” she admitted, “but I would have sent someone with great skill to look after your father.” She paused. “I just didn’t realize there would be quite this much travel involved.”

The boy gave a little, dry laugh. Eir looked up, alarmed, and he smiled shyly at her. “Mother is there,” he said, and around the length of the wolf’s massive leg, a woman knelt in the dirt, holding a containment field in her hands. A figure lay on the ground before her, bare-chested, with a great wound across his abdomen.

Eir broke into a trot. The wind kicked up, swirling black dust around her feet and across the containment field. The boy kept pace with her for a moment, and then was gone, once again lengthening, twisting, until a huge snake took his place. He stretched, black scales gleaming, forming a barrier against the wind until Eir found herself running along a corridor composed of wolf and snake.

The woman looked up as she approached. Her hair was plastered against her pale, painted face, and black dust streaked over her cheeks and forehead. 

“The All-Father’s magic repels mine,” she said, voice cracked and broken with effort. “I cannot save him.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Eir said, kneeling beside the man. It was Loki, poor, embattled Loki, torn and broken, face grey and twisted with pain even in uneasy sleep. “Lower the containment field.”

The woman drew in a shuddering breath, and the field dispersed.

Loki did not stir. “What have you been doing, young man? What good is this to anyone?” Eir scolded softly, probing gently along the edges of the wound. A massive puncture, a killing wound, so dire that the natural rejuvenation of the body was outpaced by the trauma. He has begun to heal in places, scar tissue and bone knit back together, fortified, she imagined, by the power of the woman before her. The job was half-finished, but the danger had passed. He could be healed in a matter of hours in one of the healing cradles in the infirmary.

“You’ve managed to stabilize him,” Eir said, lifting her pale eyes to the woman. “Well done, but he will need some help to heal. We must take him to Asgard.”

The woman’s voice was sharp. “You are here. Heal him here.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

The woman jerked her sharp chin toward the bag at Eir’s side. “You have what you need.” Her eyes gleamed. “I have heard stories of your power. Life blooms where you step, even on the bloodiest battlefield. Has your skill lessened over the centuries, Healer?”

Eir could not argue. Perhaps she had become too used to the routine and ease of the Citadel. She had knelt in the dirt at the side of wounded men before. “You’ll need to generate power for the loom in my bag to work,” she said, reaching into her bag. “Its power supply will not last. Are you able?”

“As much as you need.” The woman’s haggard face belied her words, but she drew a piece of flint and a stone from the folds of her robe. A spark, caught up in the woman’s fingers, was twisted apart again and again until a warm glow spread and enveloped her hands.

Eir set to work.

The All-Father’s magic infused every fiber of Loki’s form. It whirled and twisted, a living thing, redirecting the body’s natural inclinations. Loki was Asgardian through and through, but by force, and the pull of the All-Father’s transformative spell drew as much energy as the healing process itself. Loki had been a sickly child, pale and withdrawn, until he’d learned to harness power to fuel the battle within. Eir had sat beside Frigga herself and taught him, and had counted it reparation enough for all the long years of the child’s past suffering.

They passed the loom between themselves. The chill of that gloomy world grew less between the bodies of the two monstrous creatures, and a pale light filtered through the pall. Eir’s mind calmed with the work, trusting in knowledge and in the strength of her capable hands. Her calm suffused the space between them until the snake and wolf breathed in concert, and Loki’s troubled brow smoothed.

Eir directed the loom, and the woman powered the loom, and so they continued until Loki was whole once more. She studied his peaceful, sleeping face, and allowed herself to feel once more. “He will sleep now for awhile,” she said, and the woman sighed. The power she held in her hands dissipated, and she sagged into herself, dark hair obscuring her features. “His body will take care of itself. Keep him warm and let him rest.”

“You care for him,” the woman observed.

“Of course I do,” Eir replied shortly, and busied herself with tidying away her things. “He was my pupil, when it pleased him.” She turned to regard the wolf and the snake. “‘Father,’ the lad called him. These are Loki’s children?”

The woman was silent.

“The lad favors him. Another illusion, I suppose, for him to look so like an Asgardian,” Eir said, studying the woman. A Jotunn, from one of the smaller tribes. She would be tall when she stood upright, but lacked the height and coloring of the Frost Giants. One of the Iron Wood people, perhaps, or a Sea Giant. Loki had managed to make a home of sorts for himself in Jotunheim after all. “I would have liked to have seen them together.”

Eir stretched the muscles in her back and arms, and was aware of a great, listening quiet. The woman watched her, and the two creatures watched her, and Loki slept.

The healer had never been one for speaking around things.

“Will you return me to Asgard?”

The woman’s eyes shifted. It was not easy to see, as black and unreadable as they were, but Eir imagined she saw resignation. “No,” the woman said.

Eir swallowed. “I have a duty of care.”

“Another will assume that duty.”

“We are on the brink of war.”

“You cannot return. You will alert the All-Father. He cannot know of this.” Again, those eyes shifted, glancing in turn at the wolf and the snake. “He cannot know of them.” She paused. “I have a duty to them.”

The woman shrugged out of the robe she wore, and draped it over Loki’s chest and shoulders. He stirred but did not wake, and she stroked his forehead with a long, white hand.

“He was such a mutable child,” Eir stated. “Quiet one moment, mischievous and laughing the next. Always thinking, asking questions. Always hungry for something more.”

As healer to the royal family she had been privy to his true nature - had watched him grow from boy to man, had mourned his passing as if he had been one of her own kin. She had thought of him often, in the wasted year since his incarceration began, and silently grieved at the thought of the long, lonely centuries left to him.

She had often thought, secretly and traitorously, that a millennium of confinement was too harsh a punishment.

“Where will you take him?” Eir asked.

“Somewhere safe, until he is able to make his way.”

Shadows lifted, changed, and in the place of the wolf and snake stood two young men. The eldest was tall and dark, his pale blue skin marked over with lines and patterns. The younger was as she remembered, but his skin and eyes had changed to resemble that of his brother. His eyes were red, where his brother’s were dark, and Eir knew that, in the son, she saw the father as he would have been.

“The time is soon,” the younger boy said. “I can pull the portal over us, Mother, but we must be ready.”

The older of the two boys knelt beside Loki, opposite the woman. “What is to be done with the healer?” He turned his head and studied Eir. “She is not very big.”

“You cannot eat her, Fenrir,” the younger boy said sharply, and came to stand beside Eir. “Mother, let her go back to Asgard. She has proven herself by healing Father, and has sworn to do no harm. She does not lie about that. It is written across her life.”

“Asgardian hearts are false and weak,” the older lad, Fenrir, said darkly. “She will betray us, no matter what your visions tell you.”

Eir’s voice was sharp. “I care little enough for politics,” she retorted. Loki had returned to Asgard older, hollowed out and aching, wrung out by pitiless circumstance. She could not think of the pallor of his skin and the dark shadows under his eyes without thinking of the fretful, feverish baby he had once been. What suffering she had sanctioned; so many years had passed as she kept her own, silent counsel. The All-Father had placed a sick man in his cell while she silently watched, and there he had sat and waited to die. “I have done my duty to him, at long last, and I have done it well. He will live, and it would please me better to see him thrive than live out his life in a prison.”

Her heart pattered in her chest, and she drew a shuddering breath. It was a release, to speak her mind, to acknowledge guilt and make amends.

The woman watched her for a long moment before speaking. “Go, then. We are indebted to you, but mercy is conditional. If you betray us, then I will draw my dagger across your cursed throat and scatter your remains to the winds, and there will be no rest for you in Helheim or Vanaheim. I have made no vows.”

The youth reached, and a tear appeared in the foreground. Eir glimpsed a forest, hung over with moss, and then the vision seemed to overtake Loki, the woman, and their son. Both scenes were overlaid for a moment, and then the three were gone.

“Ready?” the youth asked brightly.

Morning had come to Asgard. Eir stood on the balcony clutching her bag and looked out over the city. The youth stood beside her in Asgardian form, brushing the dust of Svartalfheim out of his hair.

“You spoke for me,” Eir said quietly. “How can you be so certain that I will not betray you?”

“I like you,” the youth said. “You are the first Asgardian I have ever met. You will not betray us.”

The certainty of youth, then. She could laugh. “Are we so different from the Jotnar?”

The boy considered. “No,” he said slowly, “but I shall have to meet more to be certain.” He studied her. “I did not like to see Fenrir eat the elves,” he confessed, and those strange, distant eyes grew wide with the admission.

“What is your name?”

“Jormungandr.”

Eir chuckled. “A name as long as you are.” Once again came that startled laugh and shy smile. “Jormungandr, life is precious. Each day we must try a little harder to honor that, as best we can.”

He nodded.

Her voice was quiet. “I imagine we won’t see one another again.”

Jormungandr smiled, and turned to go. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said, and was gone.


	2. No Harm Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eir reflects, and welcomes a visitor.

Rain beat against a window pane in New Asgard, and Eir watched the shadows of it play across the quilt that covered her bed. Her hands plucked at the threads as she rested, and her mind wandered to a memory of standing by the healing cradle, watching an intricate network of blood vessels pulse with life.

She had built a healing cradle, Midgard’s first. It stood in a newly-built hospital, watched over by bright-eyed novices. They worked tirelessly, slowly building up a library of knowledge that would see their people forward after the loss of the Realm Eternal. Eir had contributed several volumes’ worth of knowledge.

It had been long work, and hard, and she was so very tired.

A shadow passed in front of the window, cutting out the low light of the rainy afternoon. Eir opened her eyes.

“You took your time,” she accused, “and you grew up too quickly.”

Jormungandr sat on the edge of her bed and folded her hand in his. “I couldn’t help the growing,” he said, and his voice was low and mild. His features were youthful, symmetrical and well-formed, and his eyes… his eyes were older now than hers. “And the time is now. It always has been.”

Eir chuckled. “Just as well.” A noise came from the room beyond her bedroom door; her daughter and daughter’s husband were entertaining their grandchildren. How surprised they would be, to come in and find a giant sitting on her bed. “Have you come to take me away again? Another long journey?”

He smiled, and lifted her little wrinkled hand to his lips. “Not today.” He returned her hand and tucked the quilt more firmly around her spare form. “And you? Did you keep your vow?”

“As best I could,” she admitted. She had tried hard, had worked to shed the weight of complacency that had begun to settle on her shoulders before their first meeting, and so much had changed. “What kind of man did you turn out to be?”

“Not a very good one,” he admitted, “and not a bad one. I try a little harder each day.”

“That’s all we can do, dear,” she said, and drifted off to sleep.


End file.
